Wednesday, 25 February 2015

There’s a new barista in the coffeehouse.He has an oddly slack face, but a very smiley
mouth.Like he’s not quite awake yet; he
looks sleepy and slow moving, messy hair, minimal eye contact.Sleep still in the corners of his eyes.The large Manageress, as beautiful and
voluminous as ever in her huge black apron moves faster than you’d think she
could, almost whirling about her area, laughing quietly, and chatting to him
non-stop about a competition she’s entered.I sit in the far corner, listening to the soft sounds of their
conversation mingling with the other soft conversations and the harp concerto
on the overhead speakers: something that moves repetitively up and down, in a
riff.Hypnotic. It’s 7.05 a.m. I am here early, but already the baristas are
in the swing of the day, and the coffeehouse is half full.

There’s a tidy man next to me diagonally.He wears small rimmed glasses, has quietly
combed hair and is earnestly doing a crossword next to his empty demitasse
cup.He smiles at me fleetingly when he
catches me staring (occupational hazard, the staring and the getting caught at
it).He has very intelligent assessing
eyes.I feel momentarily uncomfortable
and look away.

Tory businessman (of this post of old) has put on a bit of
weight, and sits near the front of the coffeehouse, looking out, looking
around, always checking his environment.He’s on his phone, as ever, and suddenly he is much louder than everyone
else, and we can all hear his business deal being conducted.Even his pale blue shirt looks oddly loud on
him today.Might be that he’s by the
window, and the light has suddenly risen clearer, clouds out of the way of the
sun.Spring is soon here, the light
comes much sooner now.

I’m aware that I’m really not properly conscious yet.I feel a bit dizzy in my head, and when I
watch my hands, they shake ever so slightly.This isn’t a hangover or anything; I barely drink except on special
occasions.This is just years of hardly
sleeping, so that I always seem to be in a very deep sleep just prior to actual
waking up time.It’s like trying to pull
myself back to the world through fifty duvets.My head suffocates on feathers and wants to let go into them.I have to hold tight to what level of
consciousness I can get.Sometimes I don’t
feel like I’m properly in the world till about 8 in the evening, when I will
suddenly wake up truly and feel in synch with my surroundings, no longer ‘behind
myself’ as my mother would say.I get up
and tell my legs to move to the counter to get another coffee.This is quite rare, feeling so out of it that
I actually need 2 coffees.I squint in
the light as I get closer to the front of the shop, from where I have been
hiding at the back.I ask for amaretto
syrup in my soymilk latte, just for a change, hoping it will shock my mouth and
slap the rest of me behind the eyes.

I also order porridge, and take it carefully back to my
seat, hearing Tory businessman get ever so slightly quieter as I move away from
him.We are back to nodding now, after
our long ago disagreement.I take the
lid off the honey and watch it catch the light as it gloops out, golden and
perfect, into the sludge that is the porridge.I stir and lick the pot and generally try to extract all possible honey
from the situation.When I am finished
and have enthusiastically stirred, I look up and find Tidy Man looking at me
again.I smile and realise there’s honey
on my chin too, I wipe at it and lick my fingers, embarrassed.The overhead music has switched to The Magic Flute, and Pagagaina is making
me feel even sillier.

Tidy Man does a me and suddenly gets up and sits next to me,
quite too close indeed, and says he couldn’t help noticing that I keep rubbing
my neck and the top of my back.I am
quite perplexed at someone so abruptly getting right in my space, but there we
are; I do this to people, so I suppose it will happen to me sometimes too.I hope I don’t stare at people in quite this
way though – he is looking at me slightly too intensely, slightly too
intently.I feel a bit creeped out.I move back in my chair ever so slightly and
fold my hands infront of me, and reply that yes, I have a stiff neck and a bad
back.Turns out he’s a Sports Therapist
(so you say, you possible serial killer! - God, hope people don’t think I’m a
serial killer too??).He tries to lure
me away from my chiropractor, talking about reduced fees and comparisons of
length of treatment.

I feel this is a
big flaw with the modern world, you know.This idea of sudden networking; that you can get in anyone’s face at any
time, and casually start trying to sell yourself or your business to them.Especially if they are your friends.It’s maddening.It makes me feel as if the person talking to
me has absolutely no care or interest in me at all, as me; I am just a possible
score, a possible fee.They are rudely
trying to mirror my gestures and tailor their language to fit mine (which is
amusing when I am in the mood for Laurence Sterne type eighteenth century
sentences with many unnecessary clauses and extra adjectives).It’s a total con, and hardly anyone is any
good at it.I listen to his patter, feel
still creeped out, and also sorry for him, because I’m scoring him out of ten
for his sales pitch and so far he has two.Blame that on the insincerity I can hear.I am aware I’m making a face, my unimpressed
face.I usually only make outright rude
faces at people I know, as I figure they probably deserve it if I am, and also,
they can take it, as they know me.But I
also make faces at annoying sales people and sometimes ...you know,
Tories.(And most recently, yesterday,
at Jack Straw’s photo while I was reading The Times: I mean, you expect that kind of cash for questions/introductions
crap from the Conservatives, but Labour…in the run up to the election?You stupid absent of all campaign that I can
see, idiot wankers.You want to Give The Election Away?TSK.Anyway.)

For no
reason that I can see, I’m struck by a vivid visual memory:When we first moved to this house we had a problem with mice. We tried
several humane deterrents which didn't work. Traditional snappy traps worked.
They have not been back since. I felt awful taking the little corpses
away. It only happened 4 or 5 times before they got the message.
Once, a trap failed a bit, and we found a mouse with his little back leg caught
in it. I wanted to kill him, a mercy killing, as I didn't see how he
could have survived with one less leg and I didn't want him to be limping prey
for some big cat or something, or a fox. But Stanley set him free, and he
ran off as best he could. He was the last mouse we ever saw in the
garden, though we kept the traps up for another winter. I think they went
and told their friends that we were barbarous, cruel and dangerous, so they
stayed away. I was saddened and ashamed, but they couldn't keep coming in the
house - they were in all the rooms, they have diseases: Fluffhead was small and
fragile. I cried for days at the wounded mouse.

So there's my awful little mouse
tale. The weird thing is, they were so lovely, so beautiful, little dark
things. Smooth and soft and compact. And yet once, the next spring, I
found a corpse (must have been left by cat or fox) of a huge rat in the
garden. I couldn't understand my reaction to it at all. I couldn't
go anywhere near it. I looked from further than arm's length and I was
utterly revolted. Its largeness, bulkiness, it’s rough and matted
hair. It’s cruel looking little teeth, its ugly segmented tail. I was
giving it these sobriquets while I was looking at it: ugly, cruel etc. It
seemed to just pop out of some base bit of my brain. I was completely
unaware that I have anything against rats at all - you hear about how very
intelligent and clever they are. Yet when I saw it, I could not even
touch it to take its body away. I had a shovel and couldn't even shovel
it without touching it directly. It was a really weird experience.
I had to wait for Stanley to come home and do it. I couldn't understand
myself at all.

Weird. Why
am I looking at Tidy Man, who seems undeterred by my unimpressed face and my
now folded arms, and remembering this?I
do my puzzled face.He stops
talking.He writes his name and phone
number on a napkin, and says he’ll leave it to me, to decide if I want ‘treatment’
with him (I see a serial killer with an oddly ratty pointy face, I’m tied up on
a ‘treatment’ table in a soundproofed room; I’m still being mean to rats, what
is up with that?).Tidy Man seems
already to have tidied away his things and he is now leaving.He waves at me, a small and very brief
gesture and is gone without looking back.I am still sitting there with folded arms and I haven’t said a word
since I confirmed I had a bad back.How
did I make him leave?Did he read the
unsucess of his pitch on my face?Did he
see me phase out when I thought of mice and rats?I unfold my arms and realise I have hiked my
shoulders right up tensely.I let them
deliberately down and shake my head.

Where Tidy
Man was are now two women, both licking the foam from the top of cappuccinos. They
have their heads together, locked in instant terribly important
conversation.Both wear purple sweaters
and black scarves looped loosely over their shoulders.Some kind of uniform?A third woman turns up and it’s as if she
calls them to order – they stop talking instantly and pay attention to
her.Same clothes.Line Manager?

Near the
window, Tory businessman has vacated, and a woman with wavy soft brown hair and
a permanent slight smile on her face, pink cheeks from the wind, has sat.I can see her face as she checks messages on
her phone.The slight smile holds.She gets up and goes to order coffee,
scratches her elbow absently.The smile
holds.I always wonder about those
people with the slight soft smiles.The Mona
Lisa smile that doesn’t vary.It’s not
as if they are remembering something, or thinking happy thoughts, because the
quality of the smile is unchanging, as if this is how their face settles, in
repose. I read in a magazine once that you should try and hold your face like
that (if you are a grumpy person like me), as it releases endorphins, and it
takes less facial muscles to smile than to frown or hold a blank depressed face
(odd).It fools your brain into thinking
you are more peaceful and receptive than you are feeling.I am not entirely convinced, and watching the
woman, it does look a bit vacuous, as if her face has just gone to sleep.Like a Barbie but only half finished.But I am probably jealous, so I won’t criticise.I hope she is thinking happy thoughts.Maybe she hasthat song in her head. Good song.Weirdly deluded, but good song.She’s dressed in shades of grey with small flowers over everything.She shakes some chocolate powder over her hot
chocolate with cream.Mmmmm.She has hot chocolate.She MUST be happy.

A man sits
down at the table directly opposite me.He is one of those people who take up space.And make noise without being aware of
it.He sniffs very loudly.Sings tunelessly to himself while setting up
his laptop, and messily drapes his very puffy anorak over the back of the chair
he has pushed out, effectively hemming me in to my table.He smiles hugely at me (which I see out of
the corner of my ‘leave me alone’ eye; see, this is the punishment I get for
being friendly so often, today I am attracting annoying people).I smile back nonetheless, as I don’t want to
hurt his feelings.I do one of those
without teeth smiles, of medium warmth.He makes a lot more noise chatting to the barista who comes to take the
tray of the last patron away.When the
barista goes, he mutters to himself.“Talk
to yourself inside your head”, I want
to say, exasperated.But I don’t.I can just tell I’m going to have trouble
reading now, as my left ear is listening to his murmuring and sniffling and
bashing away at the laptop keys; his constant readjustment of himself in his
chair.Argh.

Further
away, my attention is taken up immediately by a baby crying.A work from home father I have seen before,
has gone to the toilet and his baby is wriggling in its wooden high chair and
crying heartbrokenly at the sudden removal of company.I wonder how long it will be before I don’t
feel the cries of ANY baby as a physical compulsion to go and pick them up and
cuddle, soothe them?I remember with Fry
it didn’t seem to stop till he was in secondary school.God, that’s ages yet for Fluffhead.Thankfully, the father reemerges and the baby
immediately stops wailing.The father
dries its eyes with a tissue and plays a wiping nose game, making honking
noises for the baby.The noise I hear
now is the baby laughter, that very sweet sound of the laughter that seems to
roil up like lava inside the child and erupt out so violently it often causes
hiccups.The game goes on for quite some
time, and I watch, quite transfixed at the smiling and the way the whole body
moves with each hiccupping explosion.Its small hands wave about, conducting the joke.

When they
simmer down, and the father begins to check his emails, the baby is holding his
bottle, and looking about alertly at everyone.The man opposite seems also to have subsided, and the harp concerto is
back on.It’s 9 a.m.and it’s quiet again.I close my notebook and open my kindle.

Monday, 23 February 2015

I know I’m getting to this, as usual, several
years after everyone else. But here we
are, my impressions, without access to anyone else’s opinions and hype, no
reviews read. For anyone not English,
Charlie Brooker is an English satirist – they would do that weird thing they do
nowadays and call him a Broadcaster-slash-Comedian-slash-Columnist or whatever,
you know, the thing where you can’t just have one or two jobs. Anyway.
He moans and rants and commentates the news, the pop culture elements that
get pushed at us via media of all kinds.
He clearly worries about everything as only a child of the 70s can. He has a real way with words in his books,
columns and his various news shows (currently, the UK is screening the latest
series of Weekly Wipe, his news
and film/TV review). Black Mirror is his latest lot
of satirical dramas (the one everyone else remembers being ‘Dead Set’, the mini
drama series that married our love of zombie horror with our inexplicable love
of very jaded reality TV shows). I
missed all the Black Mirrors when they first aired. People talked too much, so I ignored them, as
I often do, when people talk too much about something on TV. Fry has been nagging me to get to them, so I did,
and bloody hell, they were good. So…

Oooooooo, now here was some class. Very very very worrying and disturbing
class. On reflection, I think there was
only one slightly weaker than the others episode in all of this, and that was
only because I felt the ending lacked a little something [The Waldo Moment]. All of
them had cracking and scary ideas. All
about what could, would, may happen if we aren’t careful with the direction our
technologies go. In a personal sense –
facebook, Twitter, the over reliance and over use of technology to live our
lives and help us, and cut us off from each other. Absolutely every single story had something
very thought provoking and DISTURBING to worry me about. Also, it wasn’t afraid to be almost
relentlessly downbeat…a bit 70s, a bit Doomwatch
in a way, Survivors. A drama about thinking and consequences, and all the consequences are bad. I LOVED this throwback TV with the totally up
to date concerns.

**MASSIVE SPOILERS IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN THESE!!!!**

Black
Mirror, Series 1

There was, in order, the one I don’t know how on earth they got made
about the pig [which was to worry us about the fickleness and rather English love
of humiliation in public perception of important people], which had the
unlikely end of being about art, of all things…I spent all of that one
wondering why no one was concerned with the poor PIG. Were they going to
tranquilise it, give it…lube? I mean,
Jeez, surely a short speech from animal rights people was an opportunity missed
here, in this very humanocentric story.

Then there was the one about the people who had to cycle all day while watching
awful things on TV, and their only escape was to be able to be on a talent
show. The actor I adore, Daniel Kaluuya,
ran off with this episode entirely. He
has a crush on a girl and pays for her to enter the awful talent show with the
killingly cringey Rupert Everett as one of the judges [what a triumph of
nastiness he was]. She sings a beautiful sad song and you imagine she might be about to have a better life…but she is
coerced into another show, ‘Wraith Babes’, a porn show, where she is to
have medicated sex forever and never be herself again. AWFUL.
Daniel is understandably very upset about ‘this outcome’, and gets
himself on the show to…he knows not what, but he makes a speech with broken
glass to his throat so they won’t cut the film of him till he’s finished telling
them off. They end up giving him his own
channel, so he becomes one of the hideous things the cyclists watch on TV,
still with the now gimmick of the glass at his throat – he’s a sort of
satirist, venting and complaining and shouting about how crap everything is,
that you listen to while you get on with the crapness everything is. Bit like…Charlie Brooker. Daniel ends up alone, in a slightly bigger
cell room, with orange juice [wahey, such a treat] looking out at a huge green
forest. Is it real? Or another picture on his computer
illuminated walls? If it’s real – why can’t anyone go outside? If it’s not – why can’t he have friends over,
why must everyone cycle and cycle and be alone forever and watch the awful
things on TV, or be the awful things
on TV? I thought and thought…this was my
joint second favourite one.

Then, to end series 1, there was the one that
seems to be everyone else’s favourite, about the memory implant that you can
get in your head so you can rewind your life constantly and overanalyse
everything like a 15 year old on the phone to her best friend. Or like a depressed anxious person with even
more incipient mental health problems.Fry
and I looked at each other during this and knew that it was of supreme
importance that should such a device as this ever be invented, it’s absolutely
vital that we never get one, we are bad enough as it is. The actor Toby Kebbell was the one who ran
off with this episode. I don’t know if
it’s because I am constantly worried what people think of me and if it might be
true [there’s a waste of time, trying
to synthesise one piece of unimportant info to get the other, when you have no
idea if the first is correct!], but his performance as the worried and jealous
boyfriend [who ends up being quite correct in his suspicions] was both very
funny and totally spot on, painfully spot on.
I wanted him so badly to be wrong.
The scene where he and his girlfriend have sex and both are viewing
memories at the same time – he of earlier her, her of…who?, is really
chilling. No real closeness at all. Fantasizing
during sex is one thing; but actual physical viewable memory…hmmm. Again, an absolute ton of food for thought
here, the moral issues, the mental health issues of a device like this. Well explored. And their eyes look very creepy when they are
viewing the memories.

Black
Mirror, Series 2

On to series 2, which begins with the very
worrying one about not letting people go when they die. It’s bad enough already, mourning a dead
person – when my dad died, I was a mess for a long time; its now, what?, seven
years later and I am just starting to
make peace with this…and in the world of this story, you can have a cheat
version of your dead loved one, constructed from online data. For however long you like. You can talk to
them by text, or by phone, and if you are really rich – by actual fleshly robot
that can even have sex. The point I
thought of here, as well as the obvious, this is as bad as fake mediums and the
like, as they may comfort you, but they really inhibit your ability to live in
the world and try to go on without the dead person; the other point is: how did
the woman in this AFFORD the robot?? He
himself [the dead loved one] said it was pricey. They already lived in a remarkable beautiful
country house. What did he do, apart
from playing on facebook? She did have a
work at home job, where she seemed to move things about on her enormous
computer screen all day – some kind of graphic designer, or graphic
illustrator??, but I felt this story fell into exactly the same trap as a lot
of the 70s stuff I grew up with: unintentionally incredibly middle class, and
giving me the odd and totally untrue idea, that I could have a vague sort of a
job doing something or other that looks a bit interesting and is unlabelled –
and from this, I can have a really comfortable lifestyle and lovely country house
with really big garden. In the old days,
this would have come complete with decanters and the G&T after work which
the wife offers the husband – which I DID grow up seeing on the God That Is TV
so I am convinced must somewhere somehow be true….…Oh…I’ve lost my track. Anyway.
That. All these stories are very
middle class, just thought I’d point that out.
A lot of dinner parties and such.
Having grown up with a tray on my lap, alone in the living room with My
God The TV, I struggle with the cognitive dissonance of all this. Didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the
episodes though. Just in this case,
really wanted to know how the hell they afforded their lives. Credit card debt??

Next there was my joint favourite episode, the one
about what do you do with criminals who commit those awful and gratuitous crimes
against children, the ones you hear about on TV and you think “oh bloody hell,
these fuckers should be dead, or tortured to death” and you come over all Old
Testament-y. The thing is, despite much Quakerliness in my earlier days, and
much discussion with Stanley and various others about why there should NOT be
capital punishment, when I hear about exactly these sorts of cases, I usually
do come over so massively overemotional and unreasonable that I totally
got the point of the twist at the end of this episode [Jamie Bulger – all you
need is that one picture. You know
the one.…I can’t think straight just thinking of the picture]. I don’t know if I could have ‘enjoyed myself!’
as instructed, since I am more along the lines of execute the feckers, single
shot to the head, that’s it, rubbish disposed of, use as fertiliser, walk away…I
am not of the lets have fun with this punishment school, at all. But I got the point. The point was to make the killer suffer as
much as the victim – by making them as innocent and terrified and confused as
the victim must have been. Absolutely
fiendish idea. Really cruel, because the
killer is mindwiped; and becomes An Innocent.
You aren’t punishing the same person as the one who did the crime, you
are just torturing another innocent person, and doing more violence. Unhelpful.
Also unhelpful to encourage the public to buy tickets and enjoy –
children included. Terrifying idea. Also – the mindwipe thingy could have been
used to start the killer onto the rehabilitation track, surely? It could have been used for good…I was really
chilled at this one. Because half of me
bought the idea whole. Even though it was NOT justice. *Gulp*.

Lastly was the one where a very crude and shouty blue
cartoon stands for Parliament and is a better prospect than the jaded and senseless
politicians. Worryingly, and as I am
sure the point of this one was, Fry whole heartedly endorsed the shouty penis
flashing cartoon, and said if anything could make him vote, it was Waldo. That really does sum up this one. My politically apathetic and nihilistic son
would have voted for the blue cartoon bear with no policies, who was also
incoherent in his criticism, but caught just enough of the sheer anger and
disillusion we feel toward our politicians to be relevant, and moreso than them. HMMM.
I was scared. Amazing, that these
were actually like horror, but not horror.
Again, it’s that Doomwatch
vibe.

Christmas
Special

And very lastly, and joint bestly, the Christmas
Special. Fry and I were very happy to
see one of our favourite actors, who really should be in everything [like
Olivia Coleman of course]: Rafe Spall, and oh my god, does he suffer in
this. This was constructed perfectly,
like an old style 70s portmanteau horror, you know the ones – there are usually
around 3 story segments, the first is good, the second is a bit silly, and the
third is the kicker. This one
distinguished itself by virtue of worrying me with the silly second segment
moreso than the genuinely scary other segments, because I felt a terrible sense
of the length of time for the poor poor Cookie Girl with nothing to
do. Rafe Spall was on the button, it was
slavery – and torture. And how could the
woman who contributed herself not think of the life of her clone tiny self,
buttering her silly under toasted bread etc.
Cow. Why couldn’t they give the poor Cookie Girl
some books, a TV, a pretend little world of some sort, a cyber cat or dog for
company. A program that sophisticated
and they didn’t think to keep their little slave workers contented?? That’s humans for you. Huh. I was disgusted and terrified by the
plight of Poor Cookie Girl. If it was
me, I’d have gone mad in less than a couple of days, I am more or less certain.

Anyway, the first bit was how to Game women [a la Neil Strauss and all those
other imitators] to a date, to bed etc, in this case, with a shy boy who has a
gamer speaking in his ear and an online community shouting encouragement from
the cyber sidelines. Creepy. The boy gets his comeuppance [as portmanteau
horrors used to specialise in, they were comeuppance poetic vengeance films –
punishment fits the crime] by not realising that he has landed a girl who also
hears voices, but they are all hers and she wants to mercy kill him, and
herself. So she poisons him.

And the last bit was where the gamer from the
first bit, who was talking to Rafe Spall at the beginning – that first bit was
his story…it’s how HE gets his comeuppance.
But then, so does Rafe Spall, who I felt very sorry for. The American gamer
[where do I know him from? Funnily enough, I just checked, and it’s not from
the EVERYTHING he’s been in, it’s from a lone episode of Charmed ages ago…] has to find out what is going on in Rafe Spall’s
head, and via technology and some empathic gaming, does so. It’s a story about facebook and the awesome
power of The Block. This is relevant, as
for the first time in 3 or 4 years, I had to block someone a few days ago,
after much attempts at explaining to them privately and publicly, why they were
inappropriate

/unkind /mean
/cruel /pissing off everyone I know as well as me. If you’ve never blocked anyone on facebook,
what it is, is…you get tired of deleting their trollish comments, or of
tailoring your status updates so they just can’t see them, and you make it so
they cannot see you, At All. To them, once they are on your blocked list,
it appears as if you have vanished. They
cannot communicate with you. This story
was - what if you could block people in real life? They chose to do it not as a disappearance,
but as making the person a grey shape.
You can see they are there [and they can throw a vase of flowers at you,
as demonstrated, which was a bit of a flaw, I thought], but you can’t hear them
properly and they can’t see or hear you properly either. Rafe Spall got blocked by an ex girlfriend, which
led to a terrible misunderstanding [I actually won’t spoiler that bit], and he
pays for that once he confesses to what happens next. The gamer, who imagined he would go free from
prison once he got Rafe Spall to confess, does not. [As he covered up that poisoning in the first
segment because that gaming thing he was doing with shy boy was illegal if
technologically aided, not to mention, gamer was the bastard who had to break
the will of tiny cloned Cookie Girl as his day job.] No, he gets a terrible punishment that is
both very chilling, plus I have no idea how it would actually work. If he is blocked by absolutely everybody, and
they only see him as a red blob [which I presume means dangerous], then…how
does he go shopping to buy toilet paper [or food, obviously], as no one will be
able to hear him properly?? I suppose he
will have to do Tesco ordering online.
Forever……That was actually the kicker, and a terrible punishment for a
very amoral man…but I am still more distressed by Cookie Girl. Oh yes, and by Rafe Spall who had to listen
to Christmas No 1’s on a loop, forever, and couldn’t break the radio. That was harsh, as I think his crime was facilitated
by the girl blocking him and not simply having a conversation with him and
explaining WHY she didn’t want to stay with him once she was pregnant. So I got the point here being that The Block
makes us lazy [and quick to punish], because in real life we couldn’t do such a
thing and would have to deal with the person.

In fact, all these tales were about the ways we
don’t just deal with people face to
face or correspondence to correspondence, at least. The memory implant allowed us to just loop
continually getting paranoid and not living.
Twitter and facebook allow us too much input into the ever changing
lives and fates of celebrities when we could be living our own lives. Mindwiping allows us all to become tortures
of criminals if we choose, instead of living our own lives. Satire is great, but you have to be the
change you want to see, not just laugh at the way things are. Etc. Etc. All most relevant and most worrying.

For a few days after these, which I did see in a
massively addicting 12 hour clump of horrified screen stare-age I walked about
feeling disturbed by them. They stayed
with me. I started to worry about
Charlie Brooker’s head, as he must be in a state of worry and disquiet having
all these terrifying consequences in his head…not to forget weird stuff about
pigs. [I mean, obviously the pig thing was in your face shock value, but…you
know…poor pig, unsung and uncared for pig…]

Hmm. I’ve
wound down now. That’s it. These were brilliant, I hope he intends to
worry, disturb and horrify me for another doom laden series at least.

Tuesday, 3 February 2015

This post: treats from the eras
of the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Doctors.(And a mention of the Seventh.)

A note on order.Target Originals are not read in order of publication (which was all
over the place), but in order of each Doctor, and each Doctor is read in order
of their stories broadcast on TV.However, I jump about in terms of which Doctor I read at any given
time.The Virgin New Adventures for
Sylvester will be read in order; as will the BBC 8th Doctor series
(as though they had been on TV, see?I’m
trying to get an arc flavour).The BBC
Past Doctors series and the Virgin Missing Adventures are simply read in terms
of which one I fancy next, as they are stand alone adventures slotting
in-between the TV ones.

Oh, and in case you
forgot, I’ve taken to recording which books I read that are actual paper
copies, and which are Kindle or other electronic.I’m being social historical for my own
benefit. I want to see how long it is before I just plug books straight into my
brain, how many years before I’m a reading cyborg.

As always with these rambly reviews: OFTEN
LARGE SPOILERS ON ALL BOOKS IMMINENT!!!!

1.Doctor
Who: And the Ice Warriors, by Brian Hayles (Target Original)
(2nd Doctor.This was an
oddly mixed read for me. I enjoy watching this on TV whenever I see it.But I found the book stilted and unsatisfying
for most of the first half.I read the
first half in bits and bobs, as I read plenty other books; but I note I did
read the second half all at once and it did seem to suddenly pick up loads and
race off.I can’t therefore tell if this
is a book that reads best when you eat it all at once in a big binge; or
whether it started very slow and improved all at once.

The problems I had were with the characters. It seemed that the books main
protagonists were all like an actor of the era, often in Who: Philip Madoc – white angry late 50s/early 60s man.I felt as if there were lots of characters
not very different: all tunnel visioned, arguing their righteous points and
being rather bulldoggish.I got bored of
Arden and his unwavering insistence on his excavation when their mission was
more important; I got bored of Storr being pig ignorant about science, I got
bored of Jan Garrett having utter faith in the computer like a robot [yes, I
know she’s female but she came off very nondescript for the first section of
the book]; and lastly, I got very bored indeed of Clent and his power
struggling. Initially I was bored of Penley too, but I warmed up to him later
when he actually put his issues to one side and began to try and help the
situation; his interaction with Clent by the end of the book warmed me up to
Clent as well - both ended up seeming more warm and human.I was very irritated with the way the
characters were so taken up with their own issues and power wrangling that they
really weren’t paying attention to the plight of the Earth and the machine that
so badly needed fixing, except from within their own narrow focus boxes.I know this was probably exactly what was
intended - to show people sick of each other from pressure of mission and close
quarters, but it did make them seem quite stupid, plus I always find it’s
lethal to make me, as reader or viewer, so sick of characters that I cease to
care.

Hence I was very happy when the Doctor and his clowning about arrived; with
Jamie and his down to Earth priorities, and Victoria, who for all her confusion
was a plot developer here.I
particularly enjoyed her interactions with the Ice Warriors, who were the
saving grace of the whole book.Not
monsters.Creatures, with their own
…issues, again [apologies for repeated use for that annoying word]. Yet their
problems I understood entirely and therefore sympathised with: they were in extremis even more than the human
characters: they needed fuel, they needed to escape, or they needed to conquer
where they were for lack of a homeland, in order to feel secure again.Their problems were about the totality of
their civilisation’s survival. [Yes, so were the humans, but their petty treatment
of each other made me root for the Ice Warriors instead.]

I enjoyed the way the book picked up in the second half, with the Doctor
allowing himself to be taken prisoner, adapting the Ice Warriors sonic weapon
to the deadly Level 7, the ill-starred negotiations.Yes, maybe I should have read this book all
in one go. As even the humans, once they started to work together, interested
me again.Anyway.If I had to give this book an out of 10
rating, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

The Ice Warriors are very underused in the canon Who universe aren’t they?I would have liked to see several more
stories with the warlords. The Peladon
story was an interesting sideways take, but more would have been good.These creatures had more of a life span than
they received, I reckon. [Better than cybermen…or daleks, she says hurriedly,
while thumbing her nose, then hides behind an Ice Warrior, unafraid of
backlash.])

Doctor Who: Seeing I,
By Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman(BBC Eighth Doctor Series)(Loved this instalment of the Eighth Doctor adventures.So far I am finding this series stronger
than the parallel Virgin New
Adventures for Sylvester, much more readable.This part was even better than the
standard I am coming to expect.It
was structured beautifully, and very simply.

Basically, the Doctor is looking for the annoying Sam, who has been
separated from him for several stories now; and in looking for her he
falls into this adventure - and into a prison he cannot escape from.He, the Doctor- CANNOT escape.Quite a premise.It’s realistically set up too.Sam in the meantime, is struggling with
her feelings of shame at having run away from him and her crushingly large
[and yet sort of boring] crush on the Doctor. [I blame my irritation here
on new Who’s over usage of this device with female companions, when this crush here came first, so it’s
unfair of me to be annoyed with it, really.]While trying to make sense of herself
she also has to try and get a life - she isn’t looking for the Doctor as he is for her.She falls into a horrible humdrum life,
on a very well realised planet, which manages to be very alien and very
recognisably as dull as Earth can be when you do nothing but work, eat and
sleep and feel you have no fun OR purpose.Sam realises she needs to be who she can
be, to do things that matter to her.To get an identity away from her feelings about the Doctor, and
confusion about her earlier life.

By the wonderfully simple device of having a chapter for Sam, then a
chapter for the Doctor, I actually failed to notice that they were separate
for almost two thirds of the book – he imprisoned and forever, futile-y
trying to escape and trying to work out why he can’t seem to; and she
gradually becoming no longer an annoying girl, but a principled and strong
woman.Sam ceases to be afraid,
starts to do things that matter, and moves on from the Doctor – whilst
never failing to realise it was he who helped her become who she is now.

Then she finds him…and she rescues him. Again, because of new Who
overegging the companions involvement to the point of ‘this is the
Companion Show highlighted by our reactions to the Doctor, an interesting
alien’, when I first realised she was going to rescue him, I felt
irritated.Again, this was an
unreasonable reaction – this book was first, and it weaves the story in
such a way as you realise, yes, the Doctor may eventually have managed to
free himself [he was imprisoned 3 years – this story takes place over a
long drawn out time frame, permissible of course because of his relative
immortality, and Sam’s need for growth at this point]…but it was fitting,
by the time Sam became the woman able to save him, that she
would do so.

One of the tremendous strengths of this story was the growth both
characters undergo whilst separated: Sam becomes likeable and I began to
properly cheer her on, for the first time in this series; and the Doctor
faced a set of circumstances that really did seem insurmountable; we
watch, unbelieving but understanding, as he seems to slump into
depression, to giving up.And yet,
this behaviour didn’t feel at all like any sort of a betrayal of the
Doctor’s spirit [as it could have done] – it felt very real and scary for
him.It created page turning
reading.

Another strength of this story was the eye tech – it’s a chilling idea,
taken to great lengths and I understood it all [rare for me - I tend to
get lost and only carry the gist of any Who technobabble; but all the
computer analogies were well described, both simply and in enough detail
for me to get their complexity without getting lost].I liked the data umphs, the IX Net; the
scary idea of the implants - and the eventual reason why the Doctor could
not escape.And the way he makes
friends with his later absconding computer program that learns and mimics
him: DOCTOR.

The only thing I had trouble visualizing in this whole book were the alien
race, the ‘I’.I just couldn’t feel
for them - which may have been a plus and shows how alien they were, as I couldn’t empathize at
all.I felt a bit sorry for them in
an abstract way, despite their original predatory angular nature, when
they were reduced the ‘eeping’ at the end. Also it felt silly to have
anyone reduced to ‘eeping’.

Can’t really praise this one enough: very readable, flowing style,
massively enjoyable, great subsidiary characters [Shoshona, all of Sam’s
activist friends, Dr Akulu]; scary and thought provoking concepts – that
don’t seem that far from actual reality when you think about it.Recommended.ACTUAL BOOK.)

Zeta Major,
by Simon Messingham (BBC Past Doctors Adventures)(5th
Doctor.This book was good
fun.It’s based on the same world
area as Planet of Evil with Tom
Baker, with its anti matter and anti-men; except this story takes a remark
made at the end of that story and then goes far ahead in time to see what
happened as a result, which is where this story begins, for Davison, Tegan
and Nyssa.The world is run by
Church clerics - a wonderfully anti-pious set of Mafioso dons who are
ruthless, venal and potty-mouthed, a very amusing set of cunning villains.
Opposing them are the Imperium science based faction- who seem to have
rather little to do with science and more to do with being power hungry.
The society is entirely based around building an energy tower, which is
almost finished and has so far taken a thousand years.It’s become clear to insiders on both
sides of the warring factions that the tower will not work and never could
have: so the entire drive of their society all this time has been
pointless, and when the masses realise, a huge civil war will break out. Yet, with the injection of anti-matter
into the scenario, they are hoping to change the balance, for whoever ends
up with the Tower, controls Morestran society.It’s a very nifty set up, believable in
its corruption, and funny as well as serious.

The Doctor begins by being plagued by terrible hallucinations of black
oppressive nothingness overwhelming all. The companions worry that since
Adric has only just died, that the Doctor is having some kind of breakdown
as a result.Once they land, they
are all separated, as usual, and then the story gets going.

Tegan spends most of her time with Ferdinand, a science sympathiser who is
going insane from his need to get revenge on the Church faction for what
they did to his family. He is only just holding his mind together when
Tegan comes, and she spends most of her interactions with him trying to
understand the difference between just action, retribution, and revenge.
He is a tortured character, and interesting.

Nyssa ends up in a Church research centre, staggered at the backward
society where intelligent females are regarded as an impossibility and a
threat, excepting exceptions.She
ends up contaminated by a particularly cruel anti-matter experiment and
becomes an anti-woman [which is worrying for a while but is sorted in a
rather pat way at the end].

The Doctor ends up going back and forth between Zeta Major and Minor,
trying to find out why the anti-matter experiments are taking place and
who is responsible.The ultimate
answer turns out to be the marvellous character creation, Kristyan Fall,
the Zero Man, a sort of weirdly invincible anti James Bond character.At the beginning he has been captured
and held prisoner [and tortured] by Church officials for years, but they
release him to do a mission.Which was
stupid, as he is clearly the sort of character who will only do exactly
what he wants right from the start. I found him very amusing, rather
worrying, and vivid. [I won’t spoiler you with his fate.]

I really enjoyed the device of the Church meeting minutes, and other memos
and telegrams from various characters, as ways of letting us know what’s
happening offstage: succinct, funny, and ironic often.The whole book felt very theatrical,
actually. I enjoyed the going off sideways from the Planet of Evil basis to the story, though to me the whole book
had more of a Masque of Mandragora
feel, what with the labyrinthine factional politics etc. I enjoyed Tegan’s
attempts to reclaim doomed Ferdinand from madness; I enjoyed the Doctor
reasoning with Fall and the grudging untrusting respect they gain for one
another; I enjoyed Nyssa’s reactions to the zealot opportunism of the
factions she was exposed to – there were many subsidiary characters in the
book, all feeling products of the twisted societal structure. The anti-matter creature at the end was
well realised.

As I was coming to write this review, I forgot how to spell Kristyan [an
‘i’ or a ‘y’ at the beginning bit?] and so looked it up online, having
already parted company with my copy of the book.I was surprised to read this book
getting bad reviews in many places: too many characters not well
demarcated, inferior compared to Planet
of Evil, Doctor being either dull or out of character etc.Have to say none of these issues touched
me at all.I thought this book was
well paced, the Doctor was busy being unwell but still did lots of things,
in character [!], and I had no problem sorting the characters one from
another - they were all similar,
but that was the point: the society was hidebound, paranoid, medieval and
dangerous – the people emerged from that mould ruthless, corrupt, and
aggressive.I saw no problems here
at all, a good addition to the series; and the politics did keep making me laugh – ruthless
people unchecked can be very funny… from a distance.ACTUAL BOOK.)

Doctor Who: The Shadow in the Glass,by
Justin Richards and Stephen Cole (BBC Past Doctors Adventures)
(6th Doctor. This was the best Second World War ‘What If Hitler
Was Still Alive?’ book I have ever read. Not that they number many, as I’m
not one of those people really into the whole alternative end to WW2 and
similar scenarios.I remember my
dad watching loads of WW2 documentaries as a child, and lots of ‘the last
days of Hitler’ type programmes, so I think I must have absorbed a lot of
this osmotically, as I was oddly over-familiar with the historical chain
of events elaborated on in the novel - the events in the bunker in the
last days, and various things still unexplained about it, whether Hitler
had doubles, where was his body etc.All this was woven carefully and wonderfully neatly into a Really
Rather Cracking adventure for the 6th Doctor, the Brigadier,
and a Sarah Jane type journalist called Claire, who has less morals but is
nonetheless very likeable.

The 6th Doctor and the Brigadier were a marvellous pairing in this novel.The sort of asides the Brigadier was
delivering were so very apposite and perfectly judged, he was larger than
life and even more dapper as an older man than he was as a younger.The sense of the older but still very
vigorous and able Brigadier was, again, perfectly judged.I saw it all as I read, and not a false
note anywhere.The 6th
Doctor boomed and made sarcastic comments and was generally excellent, at
the top of his game as we so rarely saw him allowed to be on TV, what with
the patchy writing his few TV stories suffered from. It’s a real shame
these two couldn’t have had any adventures together, as this book shows
what a great team they were.And
along with the journalist Claire, who wasn’t a third wheel at all, they
made an excellent unit [no pun intended though there it is].

Can’t praise this highly enough. It was scary at the beginning [red eyed
horned imps glimpsed in glass and out of the corners of eyes], and I
thought it was going to end up a horror; then morphed into an alien story
with several twists.Ended up as a
Classic Who story, feeling almost lifted from the Pertwee era, but with
Colin Baker having his stamp all over it instead.Just excellent!ACTUAL
BOOK.)

5.Doctor
Who: And the Loch Ness Monster, by Terrance Dicks (Target
Original)
(4th Doctor. This is going to be a rather bitty review, so bear with
me.I love this story on TV.The book let it down considerably, which was
a shame, as I usually find Terrance Dicks’ books very readable. There was, in
the TV version, an awful lot of Tom bouncing off the companions, and being
quirky and full of energy and life; the first thing I noticed on reading the
book was the way a vast amount of banter and humour had been lifted straight
out of the exchanges, leaving them purely informative and functional, plot
developing, but more or less character-less.The whole of the first scene when they land and come out of the TARDIS,
for example. I know it’s a recovered scene, but even some of the later scenes
have a lovely backward and forward feel with Tom and the others via dialogue,
and in the book, this feeling is almost gone.This leads to a great loss of atmosphere, as the humour and quirkiness
are the balance to the otherwise fey and odd feel of the Scotland depicted,
with its English fish out of water characters come to visit meddlesomely.The book also misses the development of the
scene in the Decompression Chamber when the Doctor and Sarah are trapped and
after hypnotising her he does that wonderful unearthly wail before putting
himself in a trance too.The oddness of
that and its sound, is part of the iconic moments of this odd story.Again, just a functional scene in the
book.No wail.

The next thing to say, is that in the TV version, I find the Zygons to be, for
me, the scariest of ALL Who
creatures.They are just so…squishy and
organic and …remind me of the fact that Insides Are Better Left Inside.They are bodily and nodular and have those
circular suckery bits…oooooo <shivery
meltdown>.I think if I met one and
touched it, I might throw up; and then it would look at me with those eyes, and
I’d…throw up again in terror. There was no real physical sense of them given in
the book: I was purely working on memory.I feel this was also a mistake: they are horrendously PHYSICAL, it’s one
of their great strengths as a menacing and revolting form of life! It’s
annoying they are not portrayed with more oomph in the book.

This is the last story of UNIT proper.And the swansong of Harry, one of my favourite companions [“thankyou,
old girl,” he says to me in my head, with a smile].So: Brigadier and Benton – yay!Harry – yay!This was actually one of the nicest exits of a companion, when you think
about it – just deciding to stay home and take the train instead.Hands in pockets, done a bit a travelling,
stay home now, gentle smile – very nicely done.It’s part of the way old Who was understated and didn’t have to
constantly be squelching in the guts
of the companions emotions all the time, squealing and throwing forth blood and
viscera.You wouldn’t catch Harry
behaving that way, and I’m strangely reassured and comforted by that; adds to
his solidity and strength.For me, Harry
has the same sort of reassuring quality that Jamie had, his loyalty; though
obviously he was older and less headstrong, but both were beautifully capable
to have about.Harry has his marvellous
evil-with-a-pitchfork scene in this story, where he really did chill my blood
with his sudden change of character.This again, is written blandly in the book. I think maybe you should
miss this book, and watch the TV story. It has much more to offer in terms of
atmosphere, character development and general look, sound. Then again, as
usual, make up your own mind entirely. Yes, I disagree with myself- you go read
it and see what you think.

Just to say what I did like and felt was done right in the book: I like the way
this story is based on a real mystery, and does its best to explain the Loch
Ness legend with the Skarasen [the poor Skarasen, almost as maligned as the
Myrka - another lovely noble critter
that I didn’t mind at all!].I like
that the story has a eco-theme, the dig at the beginning about our “planet’s
dependence on a mineral slime”, as relevant today as ever due to much delayed
and woefully lacking investment in renewable energy.I liked the Duke of Fothergill and his
snobbiness [though he seemed a much more alarming and articulate character
before we knew he was a zygon imposter]. I liked the Nurse, that scary nurse
who is supposed to be helping you and isn’t really – while I was reading I was
seeing Billie Whitelaw in my head for this character.I liked the Doctor commenting that the
Brigadier “has a touching faith in high explosives as a universal solution”,
one of his more laconic comments.And
yes - I really like the Skarasen, scary faced thing!ACTUAL BOOK.)

I’m stopping here
with this post, for 2 reasons.Firstly,
I seem to have waffled very long about the 5 books I have mentioned.And secondly, I wanted to add a note about
the Big Finish audios. I’ve listened
to nos. 20 and 21 and was going to add those to the end of this review as items
6 and 7. But I won’t because I don’t have much to say about them. No 20: Loups
Garoux, by Marc Platt, was a werewolf story with the Fifth Doctor and
Turlough. Though I could see it had much to recommend it in some ways (a good
exploration of the idea of werewolves, an interesting rainforest setting and
Eleanor Bron voicing one of the main characters), it didn’t grab me at all, and
my attention drifted mercilessly, even though I wasn’t doing anything else
while listening to it.It was great to
hear Mark Strickson (as Turlough again, being one of my favourite and one of
the most underused companions – and he was given some character depth in this
story).But I just wasn’t enjoying
it.The same went for no.21, Dust
Breeding, by Mike Tucker, a writer I usually enjoy very much.This was a Seventh Doctor and Ace story - all
the reason for me to enjoy it more…but what I heard was a lot of very bad
accents that put me off right from the start.I thought the initial idea was very interesting, but it sounded as though
Sylvester and Sophie Aldred themselves weren’t that enthused.Again, my attention wandered all over the
place, I just did not feel involved.

As I came to the end of these two, I realised I have been hopefully making lots
of comments about how these plays will pick up as they go along, but so far, more
of them I am NOT enjoying than I am, by far. So I think, whilst I am going to
carry on listening, in future I’ll only review those I enjoy - or else otherwise
really have something to say about. They may well pick up, but in the meantime, I don’t get any pleasure out of
writing reviews consistently saying why I didn’t like something.I like those to be the exception, not the
rule.So the Big Finish audios you’ll
see reviewed here in future are the ones that grabbed me, for whatever reason.
The books I will carry on as usual, as I am finding only the very occasional
one I’m not liking there, so no need to change.